


A Purromising Start

by eris_of_imladris



Category: Zero Escape (Video Games)
Genre: Bad Puns, Cat Puns, Cats, F/M, Family, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Hanukkah, Jewish Character, Menorah, Puns & Word Play, S'vivon | Dreidel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:28:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21683746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eris_of_imladris/pseuds/eris_of_imladris
Summary: Celebrating Hanukkah with Diana’s newly-discovered family for the first time can be awkward, but also very meaningful.Written for ZEcret Santa 2019. Prompt: Jewish Phi, Sigma, and Diana spending their first Hanukkah together.
Relationships: Diana & Phi (Zero Escape), Diana/Sigma Klim, Sigma Klim & Phi
Comments: 4
Kudos: 18
Collections: ZEcret Santa 2019





	A Purromising Start

**Author's Note:**

> I was so excited to see a Hanukkah prompt that I simply had to write this! It was a pawsome prompt and I’m wishing you a Hanukkah as happy as the Klim family, cat puns and all!

“Meowy Christmas,” said Sigma as he stood at the door, Phi’s cat Lambda weaving his way between Diana’s legs to greet the newcomer.

“Shouldn’t it be Happy Hanucat?” Diana asked, ushering him inside.

“Hamewkah sounds better to me,” Phi’s voice called from the kitchen, where the smell of onions and the sound of frying potatoes wafted out.

Sigma laughed. “Does she need a helpurr in there?” he asked, removing his jacket and draping it on the couch.

“I think she’s fine,” Diana said, guiding Sigma into the small living room that she’d decorated as best as she could. Blue and white lights hung from the ceiling, an electric menorah sat in the window, and an actual one sat on the table for later. But both Phi and Sigma had wanted to come while the sun was still up, and Diana wasn’t about to say no to her brand-new family.

Hanukkah was, after all, a celebration of impossibility. The outnumbered Maccabees won the war, the oil stayed lit for eight days. It was equally impossible for Diana to be hosting this party for a family she didn’t know she had until her time in Dcom, for her to have a daughter who was too close to her own age to be real. And yet, it was all real. It was all too fitting, really, that this would be their first celebration as a family.

They didn’t feel like a real family, not yet. They hadn’t even known each other for a year - it was shortly after Hanukkah last year when they all went to Dcom, not knowing each other, and now they were trying to make things work like the family existed forever. Sigma was more like a boyfriend than a husband, even though she suspected he had more in mind. She hadn’t caught the bouquet at Akane and Junpei’s wedding, but she had the feeling she would be getting married before long to the usually goofy but sometimes deadly serious man who was now in the kitchen annoying their daughter. He’d mastered dad jokes in a remarkably short time, but she still wondered if Phi felt she was good enough at being a mother.

She wasn’t even cooking, although she had been until Phi and the cat arrived to her little apartment. It felt homier with her there, far homier than last year when her abusive ex was “celebrating” with her. Now, at least, she could relax.

“I think they’re ready,” Phi said, emerging from the kitchen with a plate between her hands. It looked so domestic, so authentic, with the steam coming up from the potato pancakes, almost like they’d been doing this forever.

But as they sat down, Diana realized she hadn’t passed this recipe to Phi like mothers were supposed to do, nor did she even know where the mix of spices came from. Staring down at her plate, she scooped out the applesauce and let Sigma taste the latkes first.

“I like these a latke,” Sigma said, and even with everything else going on in her head, Diana couldn’t help but chuckle.

“No cats were harmed in the making of this dish,” Phi rolled her eyes.

“That one wasn’t mandatory,” Sigma agreed. “It just had to happen.”

“I don’t know about that,” Phi said, finishing off her first latke.

“Maybe it’s time to play dreidel,” Diana said hesitantly. She knew that they enjoyed bickering, but sometimes it still felt like things were about to turn into a real fight. She smiled sheepishly as Sigma got up and got the small plastic top from the kitchen, with Hebrew letters on each of the four sides, then passed it to Diana.

“Ladies first,” Sigma said, plopping a face-up hat between them to be the pot, adding one piece of chocolate gelt, and then giving them ten each.

“What does that make me, chopped liver?” Phi asked jokingly as Diana leaned down, rolling the dreidel.

“Nun,” she said. Nothing happened when the dreidel fell on a Nun. It was easy enough to pass the dreidel to the left, where Phi sat cross-legged on the floor, snacking.

She spun with more of a flourish than Diana expected, and it landed on - 

“Hey,” Phi said, both an exclamation of mild annoyance and the letter on the dreidel. “Half doesn’t mean much when it’s just the one in there.”

“What happens if there’s only one piece of gelt in the pot, anyway?” Sigma asked as Phi reached in, rolling the chocolate coin between her fingers.

“We put another in so the pot isn’t empty, but Phi gets to keep it - at least that was how it was done when I was little,” Diana said, hoping she wasn’t being too overbearing, but both Phi and Sigma accepted her situation. He fished another piece of gelt out of the big bag in the corner and plopped it in the pot, then made his move.

“Nun again… you’ve gotta be kitten me,” Sigma said, passing it to Diana, taking care to ensure their hands met over the plastic toy.

Diana blushed slightly, rolling the dreidel into the plate of latkes. “Shin,” she said at the same time as Sigma said, “That doesn’t count.”

“Sure it doesn’t,” Phi said sarcastically.

“I’m fine to put one back,” Diana said, reaching into her pile before passing the dreidel to Phi. She smiled at Sigma, appreciating how he was trying to look out for her, even if she wasn’t about to start their family gathering by cheating.

“Hey,” she said, picking up one of the pieces out of the pot, then counting hers. “Twelve for me - looks like I’m winning.”

“Not so fast,” Sigma said, catching the dreidel when she tossed it (just like a real dad, just like Diana’s dad always did) and spinning.

Diana relaxed more as the turns went on, as the pot grew bigger and their own piles grew smaller, as did the plate of latkes. When the last one was done, the table became charged, but in a good way - the next person to roll a gimel, according to Phi’s rules, would be the winner.

It was close, once, when Lambda jumped up on the table and batted at the dreidel, and Phi exclaimed that “that was going to be a gimel!” and scowled when Sigma called her reaction “amewsing.” And it was too easy for Diana to see how this might have looked if they were a family from the beginning, Phi as a young redhead looking like her own little sister trying to skew the results in her favor, Sigma the calm force of reason keeping chaos from erupting.

(She tried as hard as she could to not think of a little redhead boy sitting between her and Sigma, for both the grief and the fact that she had no idea how her ancient, scheming son would play dreidel.)

Sigma rolled again - a shin, reducing his number to five (not counting one he’d eaten, saying it was a family tradition of his to eat when the first gimel was rolled a while back), before Diana took the dreidel again.

It rolled and rolled before landing on gimel.

“Meowzel tov,” Sigma said, flipping one of his coins into the pot as Phi did the same.

“I guess there’s no point in SHIFTing to the timeline where I got the gimel,” Phi said, and it took Diana just a little too long to laugh.

“Looks like we have a winner,” he said, tipping the hat into Diana’s pile as she watched the foil-wrapped chocolate coins cascade down onto her plate.

“You don’t mind that we did these rules?” Diana asked Sigma, who had technically rolled the first gimel back when there were still latkes on the plate. He’d lost to a technicality; her ex would be furious.

“It’s tradition. What can I say?” he grinned, reaching over to pet Lambda as the cat snuck off with a small piece of leftover latke.

“Not your tradition,” Diana blushed.

“Yet,” he said. “We’re still making our family’s traditions.” He looked over at the window, where the sun was beginning to set. “And it seems like it’s time to make one more. Where are the candles?”

“I’ve got them,” Phi said, the two of them working in tandem to set up the menorah - at least until they started bickering over which direction to insert the candles and which to light them. 

Diana could picture in her head, just as vividly as if she’d SHIFTed, the same scene with her and her sister when they were little, arguing over who was right based on Hebrew school or what their Bubbe said. In the end, she was fairly sure that they were lighting the candles in the wrong way, but something felt very right as she looked at the faces of her boyfriend-ish and sorta-daughter flickering in the candlelight. It might not be right, but it was them - their own family tradition, their first of many.

It was truly a happy Hanukkah.


End file.
